Over the past couple of Mondays, we have been looking at the difference between fiction and nonfiction books with our PK1 students. We approached this by reading aloud a pair of books (one fiction, one nonfiction) about the same topic (a specific animal) each week and then exploring with students how these books are the same and how they are different. Our young inquirers figured out pretty quickly that one type of book showed you "real things", helped you to learn something about the animal, while the other book included things that must have been made up. For example, in our story about the little otter, they pointed out that otters don't write lists. Bit by bit we introduced the respective terminology, fiction and nonfiction, and you might have heard your pre-kindergartener say these words also at home.

This week, when they visited the library, I told them about a big problem: someone had mixed up a stack of fiction and nonfiction books and would they help me to sort the books out. At first, there were some questions, why anyone would do such a thing, mixing up books, but then a student explained, they might have been in the library for the first time and it could have been an accident, not knowing about the difference between fiction and nonfiction.

Our students, being as caring as they are, were more than happy to help and got started right away, sorting out fiction and nonfiction. They watched each other closely to see who needed some extra help in putting a book in the correct stack. And in no time, our books were sorted into two neat stacks.

Our main goal at this point is for our young inquirers to understand that there are two different kinds of books which we use for different purposes. We will pursue this also in our upcoming inquiry circles, showing students how we use nonfiction books to find answers to our wonderings and questions. As you know, our PK1 students have recently embarked on a new unit around living things under the transdisciplinary theme Sharing the Planet. We look forward to learning with our students about their topics of interest through inquiry circles. Stay tuned to find out more what this looks like in PK1.